Tustin resident Mykenzie Lane, 21, was shot in the foot while escaping the mass shooting in Las Vegas. Photo courtesy of Mykenzie Lane

Brandon Helmick, 20, of Rancho Santa Margarita, and his girlfriend Mykenzie Lane, 21, of Tustin, were at the concert in Las Vegas when the mass shooting occurred. Lane was shot in the foot. Photo courtesy of Kristi Almanzar

Kristi Almanzar was asleep in her Tustin home Sunday, Oct. 1 when her phone rang at 10:19 p.m.

“Mom! I’ve been shot!” Mykenzie Lane, 21, screamed.

The only advice the middle school teacher could muster was, “Run!” Her daughter hung up with the words, “I’ll do what I can. Love you.”

Fortunately, Lane’s injury in the Las Vegas mass shooting is not life-threatening. The Foothill High graduate checked out of the hospital early Monday morning with a bullet still embedded in her left foot.

In the chaos, Almanzar waited 15 torturous minutes before she heard from Lane’s boyfriend, Brandon Helmick, 20, of Rancho Santa Margarita. Her daughter was on her way to the hospital, Helmick told her.

“I was hysterical,” Almanzar, 42, said. “She’s my only child.”

Lane and Helmick were startled by the first shots, but assured one another they were fireworks.

“My guess is that the guy was shooting out the glass in the hotel room windows,” Lane said.

Then, with the second round of rapid-fire crackles, they took off running.

“Everyone tried to stay calm, as though we all knew to avoid a stampede,” Lane said. “People were falling all around us. I didn’t know if they were hit or were ducking. There was nowhere to hide. I saw someone dying in the hands of another person.”

During their escape, she felt the shocking sting of the bullet. Moments later, briefly hiding behind a car, she called her mother.

“I didn’t want her to learn about this on the news,” she said.

Lane kept jogging until overcome by pain. Helmick, a baseball player at Saddleback College, lifted her onto his back and trotted onward.

“It was so horrible,” Lane said. “I saw five people lying on the ground dead. We saw an ambulance at the end of the street. I yelled, ‘I’ve been shot! I need help!'”

“People had been shot in the head,” she said. “I thought, you know what, compared to this, I’m OK. So I told the driver to go on without me.”

She and Helmick ended up thumbing a ride to the hospital with an Uber driver who already had picked up another victim.

By the time Almanzar could fly into Las Vegas Monday morning, Lane already had relocated to her uncle’s house. The Cal State Dominguez Hills student will undergo surgery this week back in Orange County.

Her mother will never forget the phone call, at once horrifying and touching.